Last year, Professor Bradley Barrett was placed on paid leave pending an investigation into allegations of sexual abuse to a former high school student. Some information came out that Professor Barrett had actually been placed in similar situations before being employed at UNI and was actually discharged from his former high school teaching job for this reason. This year, a new choir professor has taken over Barrett's classes. I would like to develop a story on UNI's policies for hiring individuals with a possible criminal/other record, and how they investigate these types of allegations. Also, I want to find out what happened to Professor Barrett, where he is now, and if he's still being paid for his absence.
A former student employee of the Recycling and Reuse Technology Transfer Center has told me in the past that in their experience, departments of UNI have been reluctant to move towards more sustainable practices. With UNI's "Go Green" slogan appearing all over campus, I think it would be interesting to investigate just how far UNI will go to actually make this slogan a reality. In conjunction with this, I would like to look into why some professors are against paperless classes.
The economy has caused budget cuts all over the university. These budget cuts have caused a reduction in student employment as well as adjunct and other professors on campus. I would like to see more information on how the school decides to make these cuts. In my experience there are several non-faculty staff here at UNI that do not live up to the "students first" philosophy. Are student jobs, professors, and sports teams getting axe before these staff employees? Also, I would like to investigate what the highest payed individuals actually do at UNI and how they are working to keep "students first."
In the next week I would like to determine who would be good sources to initially approach and possibly set up an interview with them.
Nikki, all of these ideas are excellent....I look forward to you narrowing them down!
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